This blog entry is an excerpt from my upcoming book “Help and Advice from the Other Side.”

Spiritualists like to think of themselves as a pretty tolerant bunch who have no strict doctrines or creeds, but that is not exactly the case. Spiritualists do have a definite belief system but they prefer to call their beliefs “principles.” There are numerous autonomous Spiritualist organizations around the world which all have their own version of Spiritualist principles but they are all more or less based on the Declaration of Principles of the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC).

There are 8 principles, but in this blog entry I am just going to talk about the first 3. I’ve paraphrased the principles as follows:

1. We believe in Infinite Intelligence. In other words, we believe in God, but not in the sense of an old man in the sky with a clipboard who keeps track of our good or bad deeds.

2. We believe that the phenomena of nature is the expression of Infinite Intelligence. In other wordsour God or “Infinite Intelligence” is nature or natural law. These are the principles that control everything that takes place in the universe. We are all connected to each other and to this Infinite Intelligence.

3. We affirm that a correct understanding of nature and living in accordance with natural law, is our religion. In other words, we try to understand the laws of nature and live according to them. Our understanding of these laws is continually evolving as we learn more about how things work.

I will give my thoughts about the remaining 5 principles in future blog entries.